One night in September, teacher Thomas Cervin was awakened by gunshots in his apartment building in Uppsala. His neighbor had just become the latest target in Sweden’s terrifying gang wars.
Execution-style shootings carried out by “child soldiers,” apartment buildings rocked by bombings, innocent relatives targeted in vendettas and the morning news summarizing the night’s death toll — all have become disturbingly routine in the normally quiet country.
“No other country in Europe is seeing anything like this,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said, as he vowed to defeat the gangs.
Photo:AFP
“Swedish legislation was not designed for gang wars and child soldiers, but we’re changing that now,” he said.
Sweden’s gang wars have smoldered for a decade over control of the drugs market. However, they took a drastic turn early this year, when an internal feud led to gang members’ families and loved ones also becoming targets.
The Sept. 13 shooting in Cervin’s building in Uppsala, 70km north of Stockholm, was aimed at the mother-in-law of Rawa Majid, the “Kurdish Fox,” and head of the notorious Foxtrot gang.
She escaped unharmed.
“I had no idea she was related to him,” Cervin said. “That’s what makes so many people scared — the people involved have friends and relatives all over the place.”
“This new generation [of criminals] is ruthless,” said Garip Gunes, who started a youth soccer team to keep children in the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby out of trouble.
“Many parents are worried about their kids and don’t let them go out except to go to school or football practice. They’re worried they’ll end up in the line of fire,” he said.
Criminology professor Felipe Estrada Dorner of Stockholm University said the situation “has gotten totally out of control: They’ve started attacking loved ones and those who have nothing to do with these conflicts.”
“This is a big change from the violence that has prevailed until now,” he said.
Forty-seven people have been killed in 314 shootings so far this year, police said, compared with only seven deaths in 2016.
The victims and the perpetrators are increasingly young.
Police last year investigated 336 15 to 17-year-olds for having illegal firearms, eight times more than a decade ago, the National Council for Crime Prevention said this month.
Gangs now recruit children to carry out contract killings — some younger than 15 — knowing they cannot be jailed.
“Children are contacting criminal gangs” offering to commit murders, Swedish National Police Commissioner Anders Thornberg said.
These children “just don’t know how to handle these weapons,” often leading to innocent bystanders being wounded or killed, Estrada Dorner said.
In Gottsunda, a suburb near Uppsala, Ebtesam Abowarrad agreed, and said people were scared.
“The difference nowadays is that they shoot all over the place,” Abowarrad said.
“I never see anyone out in the streets anymore,” she said.
Most young gang members have been on social services’ radar for years, said Evin Cetin, a former lawyer who has written a book of interviews with young gang members, Mitt ibland oss (In Our Midst).
“These kids have been trained by criminals — they live, eat and breathe a culture of violence,” she said.
Kristersson has blamed the rise in organized crime on “naivety” over immigration.
“An irresponsible immigration policy and failed integration led us here,” the conservative leader said.
However, Cetin argued that the integration problem has a lot to do with the segregation immigrant communities face.
“How is it possible that young Swedes in one of the richest countries in the world have gotten to the point where they’re willing to kill, and kill their best friend to boot?” she asked.
“It says a lot about segregation, the conditions in which they grow up and the exclusion they experience,” she added.
Sakariya Hirsi, 26, who hails from Tensta, a heavily immigrant suburb north of Stockholm, has seen several of his friends die in the violence.
In 2020, he founded the Kollektiv Sorg group (Collective Grief) to help families cope with their loss and lobby for change.
At a recent meeting of the group at a church in the suburb of Botkyrka, Alexander Zadruzny, 23, said he has “lost count” of how many of his friends have died.
“I used to say that our kids grow up too fast, but ... our kids don’t even live long enough to become adults,” he said.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS